Are you tired of the same old warmers, games and activities? This is the place to be! This blog displays a collection of top creative ideas taken from the best sites and sources to spice up your classes and involve your students in fun activities dealing with different skills and grammar topics. Welcome aboard!

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Prepare a set of 10 personal
questions such as “What’s your friend’s address?”/ “what’s his/her favorite
food?”/ “what’s his/her favorite school subject?”/”how many people live in
his/her house/apartment” Ask students to sit in pairs. They can (and should)
choose to sit with their closest friend in class. Have pairs sit back-to-back.
Give students a piece of paper (or they can also use their notebooks) and tell
them to number this paper from 1 to 10. Ask the questions and have students’
write down the answer that is true for his/her pair. Then have students check
what they wrote and, if they have the same answer, they score a point. At the
end, the pair that has more points wins.

Source: Vânia, adapted from The Monster Book of Language Teaching Activities

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Here is an idea that involves art and a lot of creativity! Great warmer for learners with higher fluency skills.

Levels: intermediate, advanced

Skill: reading, writing, listening and speaking

Material needed: pre-selected piece of newsInstructions:

Divide class into two different groups, A and B. Group B leaves the room and Group A reads a short piece of news. Then, ask students in Group A to produce a drawing representing the story they have just read. When everyone is done, students from Group B come in, pair up with someone from Group A and look at their partner`s drawing. Then, explain that students from Group B should write what they think the story is about based on the drawing. In the end, pairs get together and compare the real story with the invented one. As a wrap-up, have some volunteers read their made up stories. Source: Marisa ConstantinidesPicture Credits: Flickr (NS Newsflash)

Vânia Rodrigues has been an EFL teacher for 22 years, 17 of which at a Binational Center in Brazil, Casa Thomas Jefferson. She has been a teacher, a Course Supervisor and is currently a Deputy Academic Coordinator at CTJ. She holds an M.A in Applied Linguistics from the Universidade de Brasília. Her main interest relates to nonverbal teacher-student communication.

Vinicius Lemos has been an English teacher for 17 years. He holds a B.A in Letras-Inglês (English Language and Literature) from Universidade de Brasília (UnB) and has been an EFL teacher at Casa Thomas Jefferson, Brasília, Brazil, for 11 years. He was a presenter at the 2010 TESOL Conference in Boston, USA ,at the 2011 ABS International Conference in Montevideo, Uruguay,at the 2012 TESOL Conference in Philadelphia ,USA and at the 2013 TESOL Conference in Dallas, USA.

M that learning!

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